'Net Features : targeted advertising

Targeting Ads By Past Social Media Behavior

Michael Garrity — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:11:00 GMT

Often, as unfortunate as it is, brand marketers will miss out on potential customers (and revenue) because they don't have the ability at the time to capitalize on their interest in a product or service. Until recently, those customers were basically lost, but now advertising platform provider LocalResponse wants to bring them back.

The company, which specializes in helping marketers respond to real-time consumer intent, is launching a brand new product called HIT (historical intent targeting) that will let brands “go back in time” to deliver ads based on a consumer’s past social media behavior across a variety of public networks, including Instagram, Twitter and Foursquare.

LocalResponse’s ad targeting and display platform will mine public social media channels to seek out customers that have expressed interest or “intent” in the products, brand or lifestyle associated with their advertising partners, allowing these marketers to target consumers who have shown explicit intent (such as a Foursquare check-in) or implicit intent toward their brand.

HIT works by mining tons of historical data that looks at tweets, shares, posts, check-ins and more across a range of social media sites. So, for instance, if a consumer once tweeted positively about a film they saw during the summer, studios can use that information to send them ads about the movie’s upcoming DVD release many months later. In fact, one of LocalResponse’s early partners during its pilot program was Sony Pictures, and it’s reported “impressive results” from its campaigns so far.

In launching HIT, LocalResponse is able to ensure that marketers aren’t relying too much on more recent or even real-time data, allowing advertisers to leverage consumers that displayed interested in a brand or product on a social media site months, or even years, before. As a result, ads can become even more contextual and valuable for marketers.

Targeted Tweets Reach a Relevant Audience

Michael Garrity — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 14:45:00 GMT

In the realm of social media advertising, Twitter has procured a specific role, primarily for businesses to build brand awareness, but also allowing them to advertise, offer special promotions, provide customer support, answer questions, and more, all in 140-character bursts.

However, one thing that has been missing from the platform is the ability to show highly targeted tweets to users based on unique characteristics, such as location. When it comes to advertising, this ability can be incredibly advantageous, as it allows companies to get specific information to the most relevant of their followers without bombarding others, which improves the overall effectiveness of their tweets.

Late last week, Twitter announced that it was going to start offering targeted Promoted Tweets, which give brands the opportunity to reach out to specific audiences on the social network without sending a tweet to all of its followers. Advertisers will be able to compose targeted tweets with the new Tweet Box on Twitter Ads, and (as is the case with all Promoted Tweets) they’ll only have to pay when users actually engage with them. Twitter ensures that those tweets that receive the most engagement are likely to appear more often.

Brands can use this new feature in a multitude of ways. For example, when a global company releases a product on different dates in a variety of countries, they can send tailored tweets to only those followers in a specific region on the launch date.

Twitter has been testing these new tailored Promoted Tweets for a few weeks now with British Airways, Coca-Cola, the Washington Post, and Wendy’s, but the feature is now available to all advertisers on the site.

Discussing Do Not Track Legislation with Carl Szabo

Mike Phillips — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 18:50:00 GMT

Do Not Track legislation is one of the hottest topics on the Web. Advertisers have a vested interest, as some proposed legislation would strip away the ability to serve targeted ads completely. But it's not just advertisers who are in danger. Do Not Track has the potential to cause a trickle down effect, meaning publishers, merchants and all kinds of Web businesses could face serious consequences including lost revenue. This week on Website Magazine Radio we talk with Carl Szabo from NetChoice about this very important topic.

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